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In the late 1980's, an inexperienced young woman named Yu Hong leaves her hometown and boyfriend in the provinces to attend Beijing University. Almost immediately, she falls into a passionate love/hate relationship with a fellow student at the school. This torrid affair plays out partly against the backdrop of the student protests and subsequent massacre that occurred in Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989. (The movie also takes place briefly in Germany, the other part of the world where significant social change was occurring in 1989).

"Summer Palace" plays almost like the autopsy of a romantic obsession, attempting to get at the root of why we love in the way that we do. A novice at true love, Yu Hong understands neither her undying passion for Zhou Wei nor her seemingly incessant need to keep sabotaging their relationship. The closest she can come to grasping this paradox is when she says to Zhou Wei: "I want to break up…because I can't leave you." Love is seen almost as a form of mental illness in this film - as a debilitating, all-consuming condition that one is powerless to control or "cure" but which, if left unchecked, can become the single dominant force in a person's life (we rarely see Yu Hong studying, let alone going to class). One can attempt to fill the void with other loves, but the heart always comes back to the same place.

"Summer Palace" is long and occasionally repetitious and the political aspects aren't as effectively integrated into the story as they perhaps might have been, but the movie is beautifully acted by Lei Hao and Xiaodong Guo, among others, and features incisive and sensitive direction by Ye Lou (who, along with Feng Mei and Ma Yingli, co-authored the screenplay). This is a largely impressionistic film, concentrating more on mood, imagery and emotions than on narrative. The last hour of the film - so filled with longing and regret as the characters age and attempt to come to terms with the special thing they have lost - is particularly lyrical and heartbreaking and will haunt you long after the movie is over.

All told, "Summer Palace" is an intelligent and moving rumination on that mysterious force we call love.

Lou Ye's "Summer Palace" ("Yihe yuan") has plenty of frontal nudity and a fair number of (not very attractive) sex scenes, but that's not why the movie was banned by Beijing, and Ye forbidden to work in the film industry for five years.

More likely, official displeasure was incurred by the film's powerful recreation of the Tiananmen events of 1989, from the students' point of view - and, coincidentally, equaling Tolstoy's representation of the chaos of war in the Borodino scenes of "War and Peace." And yet, all that is besides the point.

Rather, after tonight's screening of "Summer Palace" in the Castro, at the 25th annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, your bewildered and overwhelmed reporter is positing this central question: whither Lou Ye? After those five years (or making movies elsewhere) will Ye become the new Zhang Yimou and China's best or just an imitator of the loathsome Tsai Ming-liang, teasing and torturing the audience... just because he can?

My money - and hope - is on the better scenario. However strange and convoluted and bizarre and frustrating "Summer Palace" may be, it appears "sincere" and not reaching for effect. It's a magnificent failure or a miserable masterpiece, a stupid soap opera or a splendid insight into the human condition - the choice is up to you; for me, it was all that, and more. Seen so far only at film festivals (Cannes, Toronto, Mill Valley, Pusan and Oslo), the film is due for release in France next month and not, so far, in the U.S.

Lack of commercial exposure may not be a bad thing. This is a "festival film," if there was ever one, and watching it on DVD may be the next best thing. If it came to theaters in this country, few people would go to see it, and of those, many would leave long before its conclusion 2 hours and 20 minutes later. And yet, and yet...

The script - also by Ye, apparently heavily autobiographical - follows a group of young people from their Beijing University days in the 1980s through the present. The central character is Yu Hong, a teenager from the countryside. As played by Lei Hao - with little of Zhang Ziyi's physical charms and a hundred times her acting ability - here is a cinematic heroine for the ages: a complex, puzzling, neurotic young woman with touching aspirations and scary unpredictability. Lei Hao becomes the character in a naked, unselfconscious, totally believable way - she alone make "Summer Palace" a must-see film (except that you can't).

Ye's way of telling the story is personal, iconoclastic, dragging here, speeding up there, taking us to Berlin (?!), unintentionally nonlinear, showing Yu Hong is similar situations time and again - and yet slowly spinning an intelligent, poetic subtext in the background.

Hard as it may be to imagine, "Summer Palace" has something in common with Alain Resnais' "Last Year in Marienbad," in its wistfulness, lack of specific believability and yet presenting a feeling that makes perfect "sense." There are a hundred things "wrong" with Ye's work and yet it's one of the more memorable films in years.

Having watched the movie myself and reading some of the comments/reviews with regards to the movie prompted me to post something in fairness to the movie.

I feel that the movie was meant to let audience have a feeling that the leads in the movies are lost. If we were to think of the backdrop of the movie, set in the late 80's, Tiananmen incident, the chant for democracy, all this would have let you understand that the China then was not a China that many could understand.

The China up till the 80s was probably such a controlled and suppressed place to live in, and when these suppressed feelings and emotions were suddenly set free, it was like an explosion. The literature and external factors began influencing the way the people viewed and did things. This could explain the "mindless" love making scenes as the desires to love and to have sex were probably something that was not openly displayed or demonstrated. Freedom is what everyone wants, but the maturity to handle the consequence of the actions brought about by freedom might not be something that everyone can handle.

The movie also explores on people who dare not love. All because they fear losing it. I personally felt the characterization was done quite well, and was aptly shown by the character Yu Hong. Love is not something that can be explained logically or defined in any one way. The insight to the characters views and actions in this movie shows that clearly.

Summer Palace is a movie worth watching, but it might not be a movie that is for everyone. Keep an open mind and try and understand the time and country this movie is set in, you'd probably appreciate the movie much better that way.

"Because it is only when we make love that you understand that I'm gentle."

That's all the character development I need. This is an ambitious film about the stalled maturation of an idealistic but troubled young woman flanked by the Tiananmen Square protests, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the handover of Hong Kong to mainland China. The film spans a decade and a half from 1987 to 2003 so I guess the misery of Three Gorges Dam couldn't make the final cut. The direction is a little chaotic at times but it reflects the nature of the film and doesn't come off as too much of a liability. The soundtrack is impeccably chosen and the film is ultimately very sad. I was glued to this 140 minute masterpiece. Politics aside, and they are on the side, this is a remarkable film in its honest portrayal of failure, not of personal character necessarily, but of circumstance.

This is another film that got its director and producer banned for five years from making films in China. Maybe it's the full-frontal nudity or the sheer quantity of sex scenes but I don't see the need for hubbub. The film is about a woman's self-reflection on why she finds comfort in the arms of different men. We see her naked inside and out. She is afraid to love out of fear, fear of something she hasn't yet experienced, but isn't that the scariest kind of fear?

There are a number of things wrong with the film, perhaps, but very little could be done to improve it. Great films succeed in spite of their weaknesses. I'm not a fan of off camera narration but it works for me here. It seems additional rather than necessary. There is a maturity to the woman's voice as she narrates with entries from her diary that compliment, do not seem at odds with, the can't quite grow up activities of the woman on screen. In order to get from the Berlin Wall to the Hong Kong Handover, 1989 to 1997, we're treated to narrative on screen text to fill us in on what's happening to the characters. Ordinarily that would be a deal breaker for me, in theory at least, but again, it works. Finally, as if this were a real story about real people, after the final denouement occurs we're given updates on what happened or didn't happen to the principle characters. Frankly, as gut-wrenchingly sad but true as the final scene is I wish it would have just faded to black. But I think it's a tribute to the strength of the characters that I found myself intrigued by the postscript.

Having said that, I think one could argue that from a strictly script perspective a little more fleshing out was in order ... and I don't mean that full-frontally. I think it comes down to this: if you've ever known passionate, poetic, misguided people, you know these people right away. They're part beautiful and part brutal, there's no talking them out of it. That's the point. This film doesn't set out to explain, diagnose, or change its characters. It just wants to show them to you in all their painful glory, and I think it does a very good job of it. Then again, maybe it's just a case of been there, done that.

This Cannes Festival 2006 entry by the director of Suzhou River and Purple Butterfly (enjoyng very limited US theatrical release in early 2008) is more unwieldy but also bolder and more authentic than its predecessors, while still as moony and emotional and indebted to Wong Kar-wai and the French New Wave. You could compare this to Dr. Zhivago or Splendor in the Grass but despite its intense period flavor at times--the cluttered dorm rooms stay with you as do the rushing demonstrators, and the progression from bikes to nice cars and email is subtle but unmistakable--it hasn't got the structure or plot of the usual generation-spanning films; it's a hymn to love-longing posing as a contemporary historical epic. As such, it's poised for failure and doomed to be dismissed by many. But it's really great fun, a fluent, flowing, committed film with more to think about and respond to than much better-made and more tightly-edited work. And after it was shown at Cannes without official permission from home, it got Lou banned from film-making in China for five years.

Full of intense realistic sex and frontal nudity that would be daring anywhere not to mention China , Summer Palace focuses on a passionate young woman who comes from the country to study at Beijing University just before the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and massacre of 1988, and though it brilliantly evokes the excitement, freedom, and experimentation of that period for what is essentially the director's own generation (Purple Butterfly dealt with the 1930's), and it gives a sense of the chaos and horror that follows--this extended, breathtaking Tiananmen-period sequence is a tour de force--the politics are peripheral to protagonist Yu Hong (Hao Lei) and the intense love addiction she shares with Zhu Wei (Guo Xiaodong). But when the repression comes, Xiao Jun (Cui Lin), Yu Hong's high school boyfriend, with whom she had intense sex at the film's outset, comes to rescue her and take her back to Tumen, in the country. The turbulent give and take of man-woman relationships is as intense at times as anything in D.H. Lawrence, but with a sexual explicitness Lawrence achieved only in Lady Chatterley.

As played by the striking and talented Hao Lei, Yu Hong is a hell of a young woman, beautiful, alive, articulate, philosophical--her diary provides voice-over for many of the film's scenes--willful, and never satisfied with Zhou Wei, but never able till the end (fourteen years later) to let him go either. She doesn't want him, she says, but when she is with him she is happy. Any critique of the movie has to recognize that this is what it's about.

It's quite true that (once again) rain is used excessively, but like many a filmmaker before him Lou Ye recognizes that rain, cigarettes, alcohol and intense sex by good looking people are enough to make a movie atmospheric and sexy and compulsively watchable. Jaunty Chinese pop songs and bursts of passionate classical strings are used with a broad hand, but they always work in context.

Summer Palace is too long, and its wild abandon catches up with it in the diffuse, occasionally irrelevant sequences of the second half. When the political repression comes and Wei goes to Berlin along with Hong's best girlfriend Li Ti (Hu Lingling) and her boyfriend Ryi Gu (Zhang Ziannin), and there are details of the fall of the Berlin Wall and Perestroika that have far less urgency, the whole mood dissipates and the focus meanders. Hong, who's already caught Li Ti with the love of her life Zhou Wei, drifts or rather plunges greedily from one man to another. There's an abortion, a bike accident, adultery, a suicide, and other events, including a bittersweet reunion, but these are just blips in the long meditation on love-longing and life.

Shown at Cinema Village in New York City January-February 2008.

I thought this film was a fascinating portrait of Chinese youth and culture, as they struggle through some astoundingly turbulent times. Coming into maturity while defining love, commitment, and one's self is a challenging part of any youth's life, but all the more so as part of a society that is struggling through the same challenges itself. I found interesting analogies of the Chinese village in the character of Yu Huong, and the big city in Zhou Wei. Somewhere around college age, we all attempt to define what is important to us and explore what we can do, can be, and want. Some of that experience is sorting through our history - family, village, cultural - and deciding what we want to carry forward and embrace, and what to rebel against and discard, and I believe that this film paints a lovely, if gritty, portrayal of modern China doing just that. In their dorm rooms, in the bars and restaurants, in their homes, in their hearts. On the one hand, I would have, aesthetically, enjoyed a more sumptuous, smooth production; but that is not modern China. China (what admittedly little of it I've seen) is gritty, sweaty, crowded, noisy, straining, and that's what I see in this film.

I saw this movie at the 2007 International Film Festival of Rotterdam. The director was present at the screening for a Q&A.

Plot Summary (beginning only): China in the late 1980's. Yu Hong, a 17-year old girl leaves her boyfriend and father to go studying in Beijing. She befriends a girl who stays in a dorm across the hall. They go out dancing with her boyfriend and another friend, Zhou Wei. She soon knows: this is the love of her life.

This is the start of a story about love, mostly from the viewpoint of Yu Hong, the girl. We get insight into her thoughts as she reads from her diary in a voice-over. The love story is set against the student protests on Tiananmen Square. The protests and riots set off a change in the lives of all the main characters. We skip through time and return with them in the late 1990's.

Summer Palace has a lot to say during its 140 minutes. Becoming an adult in the 80's and 90's in China, student life, friendship, sex and most of all love. The language alternates between high-sounding diary thoughts and realistic taken-from-life dialogs. The photography varies from poetic "print it and hang it on the wall" quality to a grittier style, e.g. during the riots.

I really liked how the director fit love making scenes so integral into the movie. In most movies, scenes suddenly stop to ensure a good MPAA-rating. Or the camera pans and zooms unnaturally to keep the 'dirty parts' out of view. Here, director Lou Ye keeps things flowing to simply tell the full story of two people during all stages of their relation. Notice for instance how Yu Hong's love making changes as the story progresses.

This, and other elements such as "defining love" and the background of political turmoil brought back memories of Philip Kaufnan's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, based on Milan Kundera's book. I must admit that TULoB (the 1988 movie) made more impact on me when I first saw it than Summer Palace does now. But this different ranking may also be the result of my cultural background (I am European), age or maturity.

This movie may speak more to the young of heart and the romantics. A bit to my surprise, the few people that I saw leaving the theater prematurely were all 50+. This movie can split audiences, I guess. Some will ravingly love it, but it may leave others unaffected. People who belong to the latter group, will probably also think that the movie is too slow or too long. I base this on comments that I have read and heard at the festival.

I probably want to see this movie again. some time soon. The images and music are worth experiencing another time. Also, at times the pace of events is quite high, so it may help me to capture all of it better.

I rate this movie as one of the highlights of the festival: It's probably also the best movie from China that I have seen in the last two years: 9/10.

Crew Trivia: Cinematographer Qing Hua was a classmate in film school of Yu Wang, the director of photography of Suzhou River (the director's breakthrough film). Qing Hua was recommended by Yu Wang when he was unavailable.

Title Trivia: Summer Palace is the name of one of the buildings at Tiananmen Square. According to the director, the events at the square mark a change in the lives of the main characters.

Connection Trivia: Asked about being influenced or inspired by "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", director Lou Ye says that he is a big admirer of Kundera's novel, not so much the film adaptation.

Screenplay Trivia: Asked about the possible difficulty of having a young woman being the center of the story, director / screenwriter Lou Ye says that it made it actually easier. With a female main character, it was more natural for him to talk about love and emotions.

Whether there is freedom and love or not, in death everyone is equal. I hope that death is not your end. You adored the light, so you will never fear the darkness.

Recently, I had a sudden urge to watch the banned film "The Flowers of War" by director Lou Ye. After watching it, I still couldn't figure out why it was called that, as it has nothing to do with the Summer Palace. During the search for resources, I found both a 134-minute and a 140-minute version, and ultimately chose the latter. My mental journey during the viewing was as follows: What the heck is this? It's all about love and sex. So Lou Ye is into this? He likes to use sex to express the confusion and aimlessness of young people? I always consider myself a down-to-earth person, and I admit that I really couldn't understand what the director was trying to convey. So I will look for other materials to help me understand. I feel that Lou Ye wanted to capture the fate of individuals in the historical tide. I can sense the director's ambition, but it's really hard to understand. Without professional explanations, I admit that I really couldn't get it! Why can't the director just tell a clear story? Not everyone can understand metaphors, of course, that's the charm of art films. It's endlessly intriguing and captivating, making one want to explore further. This is the allure of the unknown, and curiosity drives us to meet. Alright, Lou Ye, you win!

You either you love this movie with its dramatic effect & impact on one's life experiences, or you hate it due to its cultural & prolonged emotional differences. Love is in a swinging mood. Breaking hearts as it moves along. Physical needs was a necessity but was not enough to sustain the emotional needs.

The performance was brilliant but it left a lump in my throat as I was looking for a relief along the way. Desperately looking for reconciliation, some sort of satisfaction in the time when freedom was questionable. The background music was sustainable with mood of the movie. Happy, joyful, & thematic as it swings from scene to scene.

The director must have had great influences in creating this movie, whether his own, his friends or through the lens of life. He managed to capture certain moments that We all thought, lived, or dreamt of it, and left it in the distance past.

This film caught me from the moment it started at my screen. we see a young girl encountering her first experiences with love and sex.set at the decor of the huge changes China is undergoing in the mid-eighties.She is excepted at university and meets a handsome guy she's so overpowering in love with , it's scary...wow , the acting , directing ,editing, photography...is breathtaking..the story sometimes heartbreaking..trough sidesteps we are witnessing the student uproar at tianamen square etc.the 2 main characters loose sight of each other and we follow moments of their separate lives.. A breathtaking lovestory about love so strong , it hurts. definitely worth watching.

Yuhong's acting skills are very good, and the history will not be erased.

This film is about several Chinese people, about how they grow up and how time changes them. It is focused on one couple, the very intense passion that they feel for each other and the paths that life shows them in relation of what they feel in each step of their lives...

This movie is centered in love. More exactly, it is centered in the romantic view of life, which is destined to collide with the fact of growing up, because the characters in the film just can't manage to keep their passionate feelings while they start living other things after leaving university. It is as if life and circumstances pushes them to leave behind their memories, the anchor that seems to keep the characters living and knowing that they are someone. I think it is interesting how this is managed as the film goes by, because I recognized this feeling in myself and among my friends: about how, by leaving school, you have the feeling to be adrift in the universe of life.

Also, the passion that the characters feel becomes sedated by the tedium of their lives after school. I think the director tries to communicate that feeling: after university, the characters start to get bored with their lives, compared with what they lived in school. It is sad to look how the woman character struggles to keep that feeling alive, but always feeling depressed because she can't grasp that passion that just goes away. They travel, they meet other people, they get jobs, but simply it's not the same. This is also related to the student's protests in China, all the feelings and expectations they generate, and the disillusion they found when they have to confront the real world.

Finally, I think what the film communicates, is that every emotion, love, feeling or whatsoever, is seized by time. This is something that the characters just don't get and the reason of why they suffer: they can't accept that they are different from the ones that were young and passionate. Even in long marriages, couples have to reinvent themselves to keep together each other, or simply they fall in the arms of custom. This last thing is what the characters refuse to do, always trying to keep their feelings alive. But that's also the reason of why they suffer, especially the woman character: they live attached to their memories and they leave part of their identity in the past. I think that a phrase that is showed in the french movie "Irreversible" could fit perfectly on this one: TIME DESTROYS EVERYTHING. But in this film, this phrase applies in a more subtle way, in something that involves people's identities.

I liked the movie. It was one of those which you can't get out of your head for the rest of the day. The acting is good and the music is great. If there is something to criticize, is that the film is a little bit too long for what it express, specially at the second part of the film. I found other criticism unfounded: sex is an important part of the film, since it express passion, and it's definitely NOT a soap opera, because it doesn't have a happy ending and it has a message that you have to discover by thinking and feeling the film.

I recommend this one.

Lou ye's film summer palace is really a good exercise of great cinema, that kind of movie makes you think about it even after have watched it..Is one of those films that I call hard to watch, there are too much pain in it, but that is what in art I always call, find the beauty of the sadness, when a film can make you feel different kind of emotions means that the movie have succeed and summer palace is a great success...for me is hard to understand the girl's mind in that film,because the whole movie she seems lost, looks like she is unable to be happy and when she can be, she avoid it...same happen with some of the other characters of the film..this film can be classified like a tragedy without hope

Personally one of the best Chinese movies I have ever watched. The sadnesses of the loss of a generation and the cruel marching of history moves me deeply. Love the performance of Hao lei!

This is a response for DICK STEEL comments on the movie. You should put his comment on the end of the line. It's useless!!!!

The movie is a piece of art! The director,the actors,the music,the editing,everything fit smoothly in this picture.The writer- director did a phenomenal job telling the story.I felt the soul of the director in this picture.I think it is one of the best films I've seen in the last couple of years.If you have no sensibility as a person,don't try to criticize somebody who put his mind ,time and soul in telling a story,because you confuse the soft porn movies with this one.The way that the director shows sex is in the most realistic and sincere way possible. If he wouldn't use sex in telling the story, the characters might not be so well defined . If somebody doesn't have an understanding of art ,and view the movie with a preconceived perception about sex,then don't see this movie!

We don't need your opinion.

Go see spider man 3,and enjoy,bla,bla ,bla!!!!

First time to watch Ye Lou's movie, I think it's not a perfect film, but certainly it's a good one.He is good at depicting the love deep in the heart:the love with desire,contradiction,unfaith,loss and the future.The film can remind your past time while you were young,can make you miss your lost romantic, can make you think over the love,the youth.So, a beautiful love drama it is.I also have to mention this backdrop of the 6/4 incident happened in Beijing in 1989 in the movie,as I known, no other directors in China dared to take this backdrop in any movies up to now, so I respect Mr.Lou's courage. At last I think the best character in the drama is Li Ti played by Ling Hu .The flaw of the film is at the end when Yu Hong and Zhou Wei met, I think, the process is not very good.

I just saw Summer Palace last night in San Francisco and I was blown away. I spent the entire night thinking about the film and significance of the message it sent. I don't want to spoil anything, you just have to see it and be prepared to think about it for a long time. I can't wait for my wife to see it, so we can discuss it. I didn't want to see it at first but after I read the review in the Chronicle saying that it was the greatest film to come out of China, well I guess I felt I had to see it and I am so glad that I did. Some people might find it slow, but that is life right? Sometimes it is slow and sometimes it moves so quickly is passes you by and only later to find the real message the director was trying to deliver. It is as though there are five different stories going on with just one character. I know that doesn't make sense but when you see it, you will understand. I highly recommend it.